Robespierre

Get under the surface of the most powerful and feared leader of the French Revolution Offers brilliantly original analysis. Explains how Robespieree came by his extraordinary power. Explores the power and development of a police state.A provincial lawyer from Arras, Robespierre (1758-94) dominated France at the height of the Revolution, the event which more than any other, shaped modern history. Robespierre had an enigmatic and contradictory personality, reclusive, cerebral and austere, yet at the same time both neurotic and theatrical with a solitary lifestyle, hidden away even at the height of his fame in modest lodgings with a family he trusted. Others have written extensively by concentrating on analyzing Robespierre's set-piece speeches to parliament and the Jacobian club, but John Hardman gets behind the polished but chilly surface of the public persona by examining Robespierre at his desk rather that at the rostrum. Concentrating on Robespierre's administration rather than his rhetoric,Robespierreoffers not only a brilliant original analysis of its formidable protagonist, but also a dramatic vantage point from which to survey the main phase of the Revolution itself, from the fall of the ancien regeime to the end of the Terror. As a title in the very popularProfiles in Powerseries, this is not a biography, though inevitably it contains much biographical material, it instead analyzes the major features, achievements and failures of Robespierre's career.John Hardmanformerely of the University of Edinburgh has writtenLouis XVI(Yale 1993) andFrench Politics(Longman 1995).